Trade liberalisation has brought in its wake an unprecedented explosion in the volume of world trade. The advent of information technology coupled with containerisation equally contributed and continues to fuel an upsurge in international cargo traffic. Over the last 3 decades the importance of trade facilitation has increased dramatically; with the need to reduce transaction and administration cost as well as expedite cargo movement forming the core elements. In this treatise, the author argues that there are myriads of endogenous and exogenous variables which militate against trade...